The Miami Heat team is probably calmy somewhere stowed away at this moment, focusing on the next mission and task at hand, disposing of the Atlanta Hawks again on Tuesday in Game 2 of their first-round series.
However, earlier on Monday afternoon, they weren’t as calm. Specifically, when it came to the final tally for one of the NBA’s regular-season awards, the NBA Defensive Player Of The Year award in this case, two of the Miami Heat’s essential elements emoted a bit.
Not only didn’t Bam Adebayo win it, which is fair, perhaps, but he wasn’t even a top-three finalist. Here is what Coach Spoelstra had to say about it.
“I’m just really stunned that Bam Adebayo is not a finalist for Defensive Player of the Year” - Heat coach Erik Spoelstra opens his post-practice media session Monday be lamenting the voting for DPOY
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) April 18, 2022
The man, himself, had words on the topic as well. Here is what Adebayo had to say on the topic.
The Miami Heat can win it all this year with good fortune. However, good fortune wasn’t Bam Adebayo’s in the NBA Defensive Player Of The Year award race.
He was pretty candid and direct when asked about his thoughts on not being a finalist for the award.
"Disrespectful, obviously. You know I feel like I can do anything that, you know, two out of the three can do.Besides, I can’t teach height. But, you know, all three play on tv more than me, so I would expect that.They get more tv games and they get more exposure. People like to talk about them more, nobody wants to talk about us.So, it’s whatever at that point."
In follow up to that response, the question was asked if he thought that people also didn’t appreciate the finer detail of his style of NBA defense. Specifically, if he wondered if people could see the “nuance” of things that can only be explained or seen by going deep into the numbers and metrics of it all.
He was asked if what he does has to be “seen to be appreciated”.
In a real-world application, if there were a number as easy to interpret as points, rebounds, and assists to dictate exactly how good or how much production a player gave on the defense, does Adebayo think these things would, perhaps, go differently.
To which he concurred, concluding with the thought that he believes that’s how a lot of awards are actually won around the NBA, by people being able to see the players’ talents. That could speak to the sheer volume of nationally televised games, as Bam specifically alluded to, the ability to see a nice and neat counting number such as points, or a bit of both.
Either way it goes, he doesn’t seem happy about it at all, which is great for the Miami Heat. No, he shouldn’t be consumed by it, because he’s elite on that side of the ball and he has other stuff to consume him, such as continuing to cage the Atlanta Hawks.
However, if he needed any more motivation to go be his best self for the rest of the NBA Playoffs, he has it.